- Born
- 1829
England - Died
- 1864
Clermont, Queensland, Australia - Occupation
- Newspaper editor
Henry Erle Seekamp came to prominence when he established the Ballarat Times in March 1854. Fiercely pro-digger, he became one of the key propagandists in the campaign that led to the Eureka Stockade. Seekamp’s editorials lambasted the government and, especially the police, over the frequent licence hunts and the official response to the murder of James Scobie. His wife Clara said that if ‘Peter Lalor was the sword of the movement, my husband was the pen’.
Arrested the day after Eureka, Seekamp was eventually charged with sedition and sentenced to six months in prison. Clara ran the Ballarat Times in his absence. He was released in June 1855, three months early.
In 1856, Seekamp again came to prominence, but this time due to his unseemly relationship with the dancer Lola Montez. He died from excessive drinking in 1864, aged 35.
